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Origins in Review

The review doesn’t mention this, but Origins was a great opportunity for me as a writer. I rubbed elbows with veteran writers like Jean Rabe, Mike Stackpole, Marc Tassin, and Don Bingle. I got advice from my mentor, Steve Saus. I met several exciting new authors like Bryan S. Young, RT Kaelin, and Janine Spendlove. I took home lots of useful advice and contacts, as well as some books! I’m looking forward to seeing some of these folks again at Gencon and learning more.

I’m also hoping to be an author guest at Origins again next year, if they’ll have me. I really enjoyed it and even managed to sell several copies of The Crimson Pact: Volume 1 (amusingly, my sales actually went up when Steve wasn’t sitting at the table…not sure whether that was more of a “riding better without training wheels” effect or a “cockblocking” effect, as all my customers were male).

I’m having a harder time moving copies of Historical Lovecraft. I was really banking on the name recognition (and the beautiful cover) helping to move the anthology, but I think it’s moving slowly for two reasons: 1. it has a higher price point than TCP because it’s a physical book and not an ebook/pdf and 2. it’s a physical book, so it’s heavier and bulkier than a CD, more trouble to carry around at a con, and a lot of people (especially geeks) are into the whole ebook movement. Several people asked whether the book was available as an ebook, so probably there was a small spike in sales of the ebook after the con; this is great for the publisher (and Innsmouth Free Press is a fabulous publisher!) but less great for me since I can’t sell copies of the ebook the way I can with TCP.

My other thought is that the anthology might sell better at a horror-themed convention where people are specifically looking for that kind of material. So that’s something to consider for the future!